Measuring Influence: 6 Key Influencer Marketing Metrics You Need to Start Tracking Today

Measuring Influence: 6 Key Influencer Marketing Metrics You Need to Start Tracking Today

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Flyers, brochures, billboards—these are all traditional marketing media. With the advent of the online world and technology, businesses are now embracing the limitless possibilities of modern marketing through digital marketing. Digital marketing covers a wide variety of online publicity. It can come in the form of social media promotions, video advertising, emails and newsletters, websites, influencer marketing, and many more. Among the mentioned platforms, influencer marketing takes the lead—albeit coming with an underlying challenge with influencer marketing metrics.

Influencer marketing, although a proven robust marketing technique requires constant care from those running them. Such is accomplished by taking note of key metrics that could tell marketers whether a campaign is doing great or otherwise. If you are new to this marketing method and have no idea what these metrics are, don’t fret. We did the heavy lifting for you by coming up with this in-depth guide.

However, before we dive straight into the important influencer marketing metrics that you should measure, let’s first discuss what influencer marketing is. This will give you a better idea if this technique will suit your business or not.

What is Influencer Marketing?

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Bloggers and influencers who know their niche well and have good online reputations are an asset to any business.

Influencer marketing is a marketing method that is done by collaborating with bloggers and influencers to promote your brand. Doing social media promotions on your own is already a tough job, and when boosting and paid advertisements don’t seem favorable anymore, that’s when influencer marketing comes into play. There are many benefits that you can get from influencers. These include brand awareness, wider audience reach, sales increase, and lead generation. But these assets pose several questions: 

  • What is the first step in influencer marketing?
  • What are the key metrics you look at when searching for influencers?
  • How do you measure the effectiveness of an influencer?

The first step in influencer marketing is to set your campaign goals and objectives. Through this, you can determine what kind of influencer you need. Choosing an influencer for your brand is quite easy now. You just have to look at their followers, content, engagements, and make sure that their niche matches your business. Once you agree to a deal or campaign, you’re all ready for the grind. 

However, the aftermath is the struggle for most companies. Collaborations with influencers are pretty overwhelming, especially those who can produce high-quality images and videos for your brand. However, tracking the success of your campaign is the most challenging part. 

There are agencies and available tools online (mostly need a premium subscription) that help you measure your influencer marketing campaign’s success. But you don’t need to burn your funds further; you can do it on your own. We suggest that you hire a dedicated person who will manage your social media and influencer marketing activities. This person will also be the one to consolidate a monthly marketing report to monitor your overall online success. 

Influencer Marketing vs. Affiliate Marketing

Now you may ask if affiliate marketing is same as influencer marketing. The answer can be a yes and a no. Affiliate marketing is the same as influencer marketing in a way that they collaborate with other people or establishments to promote businesses. However, affiliate marketing builds partnerships with established companies, publishers, and blogs, while influencer marketing works with influential people. Their goals may be the same—to increase brand awareness and grow revenue, but their methods for achieving them are different. Affiliate marketing is done by offering discounts, special offers, and sales, while influencers get paid to promote your brand. 

How Do You Track Influencer Marketing? 

Below are the six influencer marketing analytics that you need to know to measure your campaign’s effectiveness and success. 

Campaign Reach

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Having considerable social media exposure is a great start for an influencer marketing campaign.

Campaign reach measures the success of one of your goals: brand awareness. The “Insights” tabs of Facebook and Instagram allow you to view both the organic and paid reaches of your page. You can also click on a post to check the analytics of a specific campaign. Take note that social media reach comes with views and impressions.

Reach is the total number of your unique page visitors or people who have seen your post. On the other hand, impressions refer to your content’s display frequency, regardless of whether it was clicked or not. Views are when people take the time to see your content. However, views may count differently depending on the platform. Watching a video on Facebook and Instagram for only three seconds already counts as a view, whereas YouTube requires 30 seconds. 

To measure the effectiveness of your campaign reach, you also need to track the reach of the influencer you collaborate with. If your influencer gained a higher reach, your business is expected to reap a higher visibility and awareness rate. On the other hand, if your influencer only reached a few people, it could mean a shaky start for your campaign. But don’t falter; there are still other influencer marketing metrics that you can track to evaluate your campaign’s success.

Follower Growth

Follower growth is connected to your campaign reach. If you gained a higher reach, then your followers will more likely increase. Before users click the “Follow” button, they will read your bio and scan through your page. So, make sure to create excellent content and establish a unique brand representation to attract prospective followers.

Creating amazing content can be achieved in various ways. First, you have to make sure that your posts use a variety of images, videos, texts, and infographics. Then, establish your own filter or presets (this is especially applicable for travel and destination industries). Lastly, create influencer-generated content. As mentioned above, collaborating with an influencer who can provide images and videos for your brand is a great bonus. 

Content created by influencers is generally more attractive, compelling, and engaging. Your posts may include the influencer himself or just a shot of your products and services. Influencers already know the dos and don’ts of social media content, so trust them on the creatives. Also, users are more hooked on influencer-like images since they see 80% of them on social media. 

Gaining a high follower growth and campaign reach at the same time is challenging to every collaboration. To do it successfully, connect with relevant influencers that match your niche so that their testimony will appear more natural, not promotional. If they have established a reputable image online and earned their audiences’ trust, it will be easier for prospective clients to trust your brand.  

Engagement Rate

The engagement rate is the backbone of your influencer marketing campaign. Hundreds or even thousands of people may have seen your content or followed you, but your campaign is considered fruitless if the interactions are low. Engagements are proof that people are interested and loyal to your brand. They have reacted, commented, or shared your post because they trust you and like to promote your business to their friends and family. Engagement rate can be measured through different parameters:

[visualizer id=”2179″ lazy=”no” class=””]Source: www.linqia.com

  • Likes and Reactions. A high number of likes generally means your content is popular and high-ranking. Reactions such as “heart,” “wow,” or “sad” also tell you how your post or content impacts your audience. For other brands, they are more satisfied when they get a higher number of “heart” or “wow” reactions compared to likes.  
  • Comments. This parameter can be quite tricky. Internet trolls are everywhere, so make sure you filter the comments for each post accordingly. Some also write comments to promote other brands. It is a bit annoying—well, you have all the right to delete and hide unnecessary discussions on your post. What’s important is you don’t miss out on the authentic ones. Respond to praises, questions, and inquiries. You can also send replies like “check DM” or “see our direct message” for a more private discussion. 

Pro Tip: When responding to comments, reflect your audience’s mood. If they use emojis, also put emojis on your reply. If they are the straightforward type, answer them directly but in a polite way. This will create a sense of home and connectivity with your audience.   

  • Shares. The best way to grow your engagement rate organically is through shares. Comments and reactions are pretty common, but “shares” is a milestone. When people share your content, it means that you have earned their trust. They are recommending your products and services to their followers because they believe it is worthy of promotion. However, do not get giddy by just looking at the high number of shares. Sometimes, a large percentage comes from your employees who feel “obliged” to share your business’ content. The goal is to be shared with an intended and more targeted audience. 
  • Clicks. An in-depth form of audience interest is validated through clicks. It can be a click on your website link or your “Send Message” button. Either way, it is a high prospect for a sales lead. Clicks are the least type of interaction in a post.  However, measuring them is a great way to analyze the interest level of your target customers. 

Other engagement parameters may include votes, pins or saves, video views, and brand mentions. Influencers play a significant role in creating compelling and highly-engaging content for your brand. Sharing content on their Facebook and Instagram stories or mentioning you on their post are efficient ways to grow your engagement rate and audience reach.  

Website Traffic

Organic website traffic is driven through post clicks. Influencers can also incorporate your website link in their stories through “Swipe Up” buttons. But make sure your influencer has more than ten thousand followers on Instagram, or they won’t be able to use this feature. 

Web traffic is crucial for a business’ growth. This is where the real action takes place—either people will book for your hotel or purchase your products and services. Engaging content is still key to entice your visitors to take action and turn them into returning clients. According to Mike Sullivan of Google Analytics, a good percentage of returning visitors to your web page should be around 30%. Anything lower than that is considered an average, and 50% is already a milestone. 

Traffic on your website can be generated from four sources:

  • Direct. Traffic is driven by people using your website’s URL to visit your site. They may have seen your link on advertisements and your social media pages. 
  • Referral Visitors. They are usually generated through link building. Users have discovered and visited your webpage because they have clicked a URL on another site.
  • Search. People have searched for your website on Google and clicked the link the moment they have found it on search results. 
  • Campaign. Users have been redirected to your website because they clicked the link incorporated in your social media campaign—either on posts or stories. 

You can use Google Analytics to track the specific amount of traffic generated from each source. While direct reach is a top indicator of good website traffic, a high number of visits from the Campaign source is an excellent sign that your influencer marketing campaign is working well.   

Leads and Conversions

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When you start seeing sales in your campaign, you are near a successful marketing venture.

Your campaign may have a high number of exposure, engagement, and website clicks, but can never be called successful without conversions. After all, the main goal of every campaign is to convert new leads and customers, right? A sales lead is business lingo for new clients and consumers. It can become a lost lead if not handled correctly, and you want to avoid that. 

Conversions, on the other hand, come in different forms, depending on the type of business. Hotels, for example, consider direct bookings and inquiries as conversions. For most retail and commercial businesses, purchases are great conversions, and even when users only add an item to a cart, it is considered potential sales. 

Like any influencer marketing metrics, leads and conversions heavily rely on engaging and convincing content. Hence, your influencer must know how to mix creativity with marketing. This may sound cliché, but you must always incorporate your content with a strong call-to-action (CTA). Make sure to put your contact details after your CTA so potential clients can quickly call or email you for inquiries and purchases. 

Return-on-Investment

You might be wondering: what is the most important metrics for an influencer marketing campaign? We are down to the final and most vital indicator: the Return on Investment or ROI. What are the expenses if there is no revenue, right? Besides, a business will never thrive without an income. Most companies would say that ROI is hard to track in an influencer marketing campaign, but really it’s simple math: campaign revenue minus campaign cost. 

Again, we suggest that you hire a dedicated person for this— one who would be able to keep a record of all influencer marketing KPIs discussed in this article and who can distinguish every lead or conversion that came from a specific campaign. That might sound robotic but need not worry because Google Analytics will be your best aid. Facebook and Instagram influencer metrics are also available on the “Insights” section. You can monitor everything here—your reach, engagements, audience, and the best times to post on social media based on your fans’ activities. 

If you gained a positive ROI, you are good to run another campaign. You may do it with the same influencer or test the waters with a new one. Just make sure that you follow the same procedure. You can adjust it over time if you feel that you have mastered the process of influencer marketing. 

However, if your campaign reaped negative results, do not give up easily. Try evaluating what worked and what did not; track the number of traffic, sales, and conversions so you can adjust your goals accordingly. Nothing starts excellent, right? So it’s safe to run another campaign even if you have achieved an undesirable outcome. 

Pro Tip: Start with a small budget. Try influencers who are open to barters and ex-deals but can deliver promising results. If your first campaign is successful, you can add more funds and maybe collaborate with influencers who agree to a 50-50 deal: 50% barter and 50% cash. Just take it one step at a time and track the necessary parameters efficiently. 

Is influencer marketing for you?

Influencer marketing is an overwhelming business strategy. But when done right, it can elevate your company to a whole new level and grow your revenue—with a little cost and effort. To know if you are running your campaign appropriately, you should keep track of the key performance indicators. This will help you analyze if the results are aligned with your goals and if your strategy is effective. Marketing metrics will also help you determine the factors that should be adjusted to create a successful campaign. 

Knowing what platform works best for your campaign is as crucial as tracking your influencer’s effectiveness. Learn more about this in our article about “Influencer Upgrade: How to Make Your Influencer Marketing Platform Work For You.”

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